On perhaps a more general level, I would like to point out something else which is relevant to the question concerning whether "science is materialistic." I've been arguing that if it is, then science itself has no rational basis. Furthermore, if we accept that science is in fact rational, then materialism (which is typically used interchangeably with naturalism and atheism), is placed in serious jeopardy.
For philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle the world was, all things considered, a rational totality. Reason, in other words, did not simply belong to a finite subject (or man). And this is a perfectly good assumption to have if one believes that knowledge of the external world is in fact possible. Most contemporary schools of thought conveniently overlook the necessary "overlap" between the mind of man and the cosmos, not realizing that when they do so they're automatically delegitimizing their own position. Materialism (both old and new) is a perfect example of this.
Quentin Meillassoux, who is typically labeled a "speculative materialist," is a natural byproduct of the aforementioned problem. His critique of correlationism along with his notion of "hyper-chaos" has its beginnings in Hume's critique of induction, which was tantamount to the rejection of the necessity governing the uniformity of nature. It was assumed before Hume that the uniformity of nature was controlled by God. But that was ultimately seen as irrational, so along comes Kant. Kant believed that we can't prove God's existence, so the uniformity of nature must be a product of our own cognitive faculties, i.e., causality doesn't exist outside our own mind. Hegel comes along and notices that, given Kant's presuppositions, we can't have knowledge of the world outside our own head. Therefore, we need to expand the concept of mind so that we can have such knowledge. But Hegelian idealism eventually became too old fashioned for armchair philosophers who needed academic careers. We've had a supposed "crisis" of knowledge since Kant. We've had to endure such schools of thought as phenomenology, existentialism, structuralism, and post-structuralism (just to name a handful). But now comes along a critique of Kant by the so-called speculative realists, which is viewed by many as the latest and most "fashionable" school of thought within the realm of Continental philosophy. Their primary conclusion is the following:
"We can know objective reality apart from our direct apprehension of said reality."
Both the common man as well as the theologian already knew this. In any case, we now have Meillassoux who rejects Kantianism in every possible form through his rejection of "correlationism," which basically means that we can't really know the world outside of our subjective apprehension of it. The only problem is that now we're back where we started, namely Hume's critique of induction, which was (once again) a critique of the necessity governing the uniformity of nature. Because Meillassoux doesn't believe in God, he must now argue that the world studied by science is radically contingent, that the supposed uniformity of nature is merely a byproduct of what he calls "hyper-chaos." If we are to believe Meillassoux, then science, which includes the scientific method, has no rational basis. But Meillassoux is just one participant in this circus of ideas. We've got Zizek, who believes on the basis of Lacan and a refashioned Hegel, that human consciousness "exists" as a continual negation of the symbolic order (or language). We've got Judith Butler's "performativity theory," which is essentially identical to Sartre's ontology as it is described in Being and Nothingness. We've got Derrida, whose entire "philosophy" is based on a form of inverted Hegelianism. We've got Foucault, who convinced us that power relations were omnipresent before all else. We've got Latourian "plasmas," Lyotardian "differends," Heideggerian "unconcealments," Bataille's "base materialism," Larullelian "non-philosophies," (ad infinitum).
What instigated this long and convoluted process was the view that it is positively irrational to believe that God controlled the uniformity of nature. It was seen as more "rational" to suppose that man conditioned the external world through his own faculties (Kant). The irony, if I haven't made it sufficently clear by now, is that the rejection of the belief in God has now produced an entire marketplace of ideas which are positively irrational.
*face palm*
